Freedom
We all have choices that we make in life. We choose to be reading this for example.
It’s in our own interest to make the right choice in any given time. Freedom allows us to make these choices.
Freedom gives opportunity, and its restriction cuts down our opportunities.
Little wonder then that we hold freedom high on our list of values.
But freedom also brings the need for responsibility, and it brings the question: what is free to do what?
The trouble is that much of the psyche is unknown to the average person
There are drives and different desires that crave to be fulfilled. Many of these influence each one beyond their understanding or knowledge.
These which I refer to are animal drives, which put us in the ‘dog-eat-dog’ world of nature’s survival of the fittest.
Freedom can come to mean unrestricted behaviour, which arises from the animal drives.
But nature has its laws - sometimes brutal ones too, as each animal struggles for survival, others lose, ultimately every individual creature loses nature’s brutal battle.
The animals have their freedoms, which vary from one to another: some are in zoos, others in the wild, others are pets, but all are restricted according to their type - an animal will always be an animal, no matter how its life is.
It cannot rise to be spiritual, and that’s a fundamental difference between us and them, between us and animals.
We potentially have the freedom not to live an animalistic life.
For many of us, that’s a choice we can make.
But spirituality requires the sacrifice of lower animalistic states for it to succeed.
Which presents us with a choice: whether we restrict our freedom to do what our drives want us to do, in order to pursue spirituality, or whether we don’t restrict our drives, and take the consequences of that.
Unfortunately, many believe they can have both, but the two are not compatible. The animal and the spirit have no accord.
The life of the spirit depends upon the death of the animal and if we choose this, we will have to be prepared to sacrifice our desires and to do things that benefit the spiritual, even though we might not want to.
The path to the light becomes increasingly narrow as we walk it. Only absolute obedience to the Father, the Being who is in secret, can guide us and save us.
Save us, that is, from nature and its terrible wheel, which turns towards the abyss.
Saturday February 2nd, 2008